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The House of Deputies met in General Convention in 1789 when the lay and clerical deputies established the order, governance, and first public statements of The Episcopal Church. The lay and clerical deputies elected Bishop William White its president, and among other early acts, provided for the keeping and publication of the journals and other papers of the Convention. The House of Deputies has been called the "senior house" for its early organization and its swift undertaking of the task of Church unity and oversight of the corporal affairs of the new body. It established what is today the oldest continuing body of The Episcopal Church, the State of the Church Committee, which annually implements the parochial and diocesan reports that render a reliable statistical profile of the population and health of The Episcopal Church. The House of Deputies operates between General Convention sessions through its special appointed bodies and the joint committees, commissions, boards and agencies. The ministry of the President and presiding officer of the House embodies the mutual ministry leadership of lay and clerical members of the Church in matters of governance, polity, and mission.

At the General Convention in 1940, delegates authorized the Presiding Bishop to call for Church members to donate to relief efforts for war refugees. Later that year, the National Council established an advisory committee for those relief efforts, the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief (PBFWR).

Over the course of 1949 and 1950, the National Council expanded the scope of PBFWR’s grant-funded projects and specifically enabled it to finance the costs of The Episcopal Church’s participation in the World Council of Churches. Consequently, the new Presiding Bishop's Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation was authorized in April 1950 to make appropriations within the terms of the budget item for world relief and church cooperation.

While the Presiding Bishop's Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation formulated policy and approved grants and appropriations, the Department of Christian Social Relations administered the operation of approved programs, which included humanitarian efforts, particularly aid to refugees, parish development, and ecumenical programs. The name was changed to the Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid in 1959.
Some time after that, it appears that the divisional work was abandoned; however, after an ad-hoc committee of Council was assigned to study world relief work in 1972, the Executive Council approved a charter for the PBFWR.

In its later years, the PBFWR continued to shift the focus of its work towards global disaster relief and, in 2000, renamed itself Episcopal Relief and Development and obtained separate incorporation in 2002.